Global Hawks fully funded

Northrop Grumman’s unmanned-aircraft division in San Diego got some good news last weekend when Congress funded the Pentagon’s request to build five high-flying Global Hawk drones next year instead of two.

The full funding for Global Hawks means 300 jobs in San Diego and about 700 elsewhere in California won’t be cut, according to Northrop Grumman.

A proposal to fund only two Global Hawks in 2010 surfaced this summer in the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Defense. It would have trimmed about $300 million from the defense budget.

The Senate supported paying for five of the drones next year. In the House-Senate conference committee to hash out differences, the Senate-and-Pentagon proposal prevailed.

The deployment of Global Hawks is expected to be accelerated with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, said Edward Walby, director of business development for high-altitude drones at Northrop Grumman.

“There are many more missions than the Air Force knows what to do with,” Walby said.

Congress passed the $636.3 billion defense appropriations bill for 2010 late last week. President Barack Obama signed it Saturday.

It included $554 million for five Global Hawks. The drones themselves cost about $30 million each. The sophisticated sensors, communications equipment, support services, spare parts, ground stations and other ancillary costs boost the budget to about $100 million each.

The bill also included $489 million to build 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones for the Air Force and $481 million to produce 24 Sky Warrior unmanned aircraft for the Army. The Reaper, also known as the Predator B, and the Sky Warrior are made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of Poway.

Like the Global Hawk, the Reaper and Sky Warrior funding includes sensors, support, ground stations and other equipment that boost the price tag.

The Reaper and Sky Warrior operate at lower altitudes than the Global Hawk and can fire missiles. General Atomics makes its Predator family of unmanned aircraft in Poway.

Northrop Grumman manufactures the Global Hawk mostly in Palmdale, but its software systems, systems integration, business development and other functions are handled from the company’s facilities in Rancho Bernardo.

Global Hawk is the chief high-altitude, unmanned aircraft in the Air Force fleet. It can fly for more than 30 hours at 60,000 feet. Sensors and communications links provide soldiers with capabilities akin to having their own satellite hovering over the battlefield, analysts say.

So far, Northrop Grumman has built about 20 Global Hawks for the Air Force. The company expects funding to construct about five a year until the entire order of at least 54 planes is delivered.

About 15 months ago, the company ran into some setbacks with a next-generation sensor system for the drone that caused the company to fall behind schedule. It has since fixed the problems and caught up, Walby said. But because it was behind, the House subcommittee proposed delaying funding for three drones equipped with the advanced sensors — known as Block 40s — until later years.

“With Global Hawk, it seems the production run is pretty well defined,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal at Charles River Associates, a defense research firm. “You hear ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are such a priority, despite the budget pressures that will be coming over the next couple of years. So when we heard they were talking about cutting back the Block 40s, that was pretty surprising.”

Walby doesn’t expect to face similar funding battles in the 2011 defense budget. He said Congress’ decision to keep the five-a-year production schedule intact could lead to job expansion locally.